It is said that while many US presidents have been left-handed, only Winston Churchill, James Callaghan and David Cameron have been left-handed prime ministers. While it is is unimportant in the great scheme of things, in one case, this claim can be shown to be unlikely.
The man who had every other job but prime minister, Roy Jenkins, was left-handed.
I take a lot of photos and I upload a fair few of those to Flickr and there they sit. I'm a pretty good tagger but other than a lot of decent tags the photos generally lack context and a description. So I thought I might try a little photo blogging.
My parents have recently moved to Leith and I know very little about the area except that it is working class and used to be very industrial. Andy and I headed out to get cash and a newspaper and thought we'd have a wee wander at the same time.
There is still plenty of industry there but the heavy stuff is long gone. The docks are empty and the warehouses are conversions. This was a bonded warehouse (or just a bond) and lies between Breadalbane Street and Anderson Place.
Andy and I walked through the arch onto Anderson Place to see these tracks embedded in the setts (not cobbles) perpendicular to the road and looking like they were heading straight into the John Lewis depot.
It was a nice touch not to dig them up but it is a shame the road surface is damaged (there is a more cynical view here. The area where the depot is used to have several lines coming over the Water of Leith from Bonnington. To which we headed to next. We walked along the Water of Leith footpath towards Bonnington completely oblivious to the notion that the Anderson Place tracks and the industrial remains we could see were connected. I did, however, remark that the area was an industrial archaeologist's dream.
Nature is so powerful. I wonder how long it is has taken for this building to become so wrecked and so overwhelmed.
Spying Bonnington Bridge I assumed that I was looking at an old bridge but it was built in 1902-3 to replace the one built in 1812. From this distance you can't see how ugly and just how much the inscription rectangular thing is out of proportion.
This waterwheel from nearby Bonnington Mills was a pleasure to see. The building behind is the wonderfully named Bonnyhaugh House.
I have always said that when I leave London I don't want to move to another city but maybe I can make an exception for Edinburgh. Even on a bleak winter's day the view down Pilrig Street was lovely.
On to Bonnington Road and my eye (as always) was caught by an Art Deco building. It used to be a cardboard box factory but it is a shame it is painted in such an uninspired colour.
After finding a cash machine on Great Junction Street we went the wrong way to find a newsagent which was lucky in terms of photo opportunities. Such as this line of grey tenements with lovely bright number plates.
Oh look! More Art deco! This time a tatty old cinema. It was once the State and is now a place of worship for the bizarrely named Bishop Climate Ministries.
On to Ferry Road (we were near a newsagents now) where we discovered that Leith has a jolly impressive public library (and just as impressively it uses the Library of Congress Classification Scheme).
Opposite the library is J.D. Ross, a tailor's shop with a beautiful fifties typeface (well, I think it's from the fifties and I'm not even sure if typeface is the correct terminology for something on a shop front).
After collecting the Herald on Sunday, we headed back but not before stopping to look the faded but still grand 1986 gable end mural by Tim Chalk, Paul Grime and David Wilkinson.
This section with the barrels against the wall felt like an ancient discovery.
We then headed back to mum and dad's. It was a cold day but that didn't stop the hour or so's walk from being highly enjoyable.
Simply a great episode with so much to like about it. Alyson Hannigan's performance as various Willows; "Old Reliable" and the banana announcement; Anya's peevishness at being human; Willow's friends mourning her ("She was truly the finest of all of us." "Way better than me." "Much, much better.") and their reaction to her resurrection; some nice Cordelia and Wesley action; and, well, "I think I'm kinda gay."
I have never understood why Willow jumps to her snuggling conclusion and the rescue plan is a bit rubbish really (though Buffy does say it is a bad idea).
This was a great episode. A perfect mix of everything that BtVS does so brilliantly. I could try to write more but here's some screencaps instead.
Rewind [This was a very lazy review.]
S3 is maintaining its disappointing run. I genuinely thought it was one of my favourite seasons but very little has been thrilling me. It simply hasn't been appointment TV which goes a long way to explaining the long gap between updates to this blog. Of course, there isn't anything exactly bad about the series, after all "The Wish" was only five episodes ago, but it was five episodes ago.
However, things have begun to happen - Faith has accidentally killed a man (not murdered) and a new major character to the Buffyverse has entered the scene.
I'm pretty sure that I'm a bit of a bore on this subject but it is a bit of a bore: I hate what they are doing to Cordelia - she is thoroughly unpleasant and this is not nuanced writing - it's ugly and lazy writing.
I tend not to read my old reviews before writing a new one but I did in this case and, boy, did I not like "The Zeppo". However, while Xander's character demolition and Cordelia's ugly behaviour are still bothersome, the episode itself is actually quite funny.
I am also older and wiser now, and quite frankly, since I don't really like Xander anyway, if I am quite blasé about the way that Steven Moffat wrote River Song's story (reduced to looking for a good man) then I can live with "useless" Xander for an episode.
Rewind [Did AH have dandruff?]
This is a mid-table mediocrity of an episode in which the mothers of Sunnydale behave badly; Amy becomes a rat ("She couldn't do us first?" is Buffy's rightful complaint); and Willow's mum is very funny: we should have definitely seen more of her.
Rewind [I didn't think much of it then either. I'm surprisingly consistent - at least so far.]
That's it. Well done.
I have completed the NHS Couch to 5k challenge in 11 weeks. I can run for 30 minutes non-stop which I estimate to be just about 3 miles so I think that I only have a few more runs to go before I can run 5km in the 30 minutes.
This is what I saw at the halfway mark yesterday.
I am proud of myself.
#savethenhs
Despite Robia LaMorte's name in the credits and despite the fact I have actually seen this before, I still managed a gasp when Jenny appeared from behind Giles and that's probably the highlight for me.
I have major problems with a possibly literal deus ex machina get out for guilty old Angel at the end of the programme and Buffy and Angel's emoting does nothing for me. The First worked well when it was Jenny but it was hard to feel the unbearableness of Angel's despair when it is being presented through the lens of characters we don't know.
I'll forgive Liam's accent (it's not really worse than Spike's English one) but I can't forgive the awful wigs, though the moustache wasn't that bad...
I'm surprised to say that I'm finding Willow a bit annoying in recent episodes and I always thought Oz's wisdom was a little much for a boy of his age. Not that he was wrong here and in "Innocence" but his relationship with Willow is nearly always on his terms and I don't find that appealing.
Xander's role was reduced to popping in the room a couple of times and saying "Let's do it!" or some such thing. And poor Cordelia Chase and Charisma Carpenter, reduced to dull bitchiness. I can't wait for Angel to get his own show, and for Cordy to join him but for completely different reasons: I liked her on Angel and he needs to leave Sunnydale.
Faith and Buffy are so much more interesting a couple than Buffy and Angel and she was lovely when she came over for dinner.
Not only was the continuity all over the place regarding Buffy's hair but the fact that her fringe was too short was most distracting.
Willow wore a really butch pair of trousers. That foreshadowing was everywhere.
Rewind [I was less forgiving of Angel's accent, I clearly still loved Willow, my position hasn't changed on Cordelia and on Oz's "maturity".]
